Users enjoying the unique gesture-based and modern Sailfish OS user experience will be able to take full advantage of the Android application ecosystem available through various app stores globally. Jolla will cooperate with leading global app stores to ensure users can seamlessly download Android apps just as they would do on any Android device.

Android applications, unaltered. Sounds great as a stopgap, but there's always the integration issue (will they make use of, say, Sailfish OS-native notifications and gestures?), and it may hinder the development of native applications. I'm curious to see how well it works.

Jolla has made a major breakthrough in Android hardware compatibility by developing Sailfish OS to run on common hardware produced for Android, particularly smartphones and tablets. Vendors interested to utilize Sailfish OS are now able to develop phones and tablets based on many different chipset and hardware configurations. This new level of compatibility will enable device vendors who use Sailfish OS to fully utilize the existing Android hardware ecosystem.

This is great news. This means that Sailfish OS will become available for popular Android phones, which will surely generate needed enthusiasm among people like us who read OSNews. Of course, the Jolla smartphone (mine's on pre-order, and I cannot wait) will be the optimal device for Sailfish, but this at least gives those who are interested the option to try Sailfish out before plonking down cash for an actual Sailfish device.

It's hard to explain... Android is "Linux". SailfishOS is "Linux like you expect Linux to be".

On SailfishOS, the multitasking is just multitasking, like on a desktop. Native applications, which can be made in Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux, are written in Qt 5, just like you can write Qt 5 applications for any other platform. The applications are distributed as "rpm" files, and SailfishOS may very well come with yum. It uses the normal Linux filesystem hierarchy. It comes with the GNU tools you use and expect in Linux.

All that, plus a new easy-to-use and pretty (in my opinion) user interface on top.

You know how Mac OS X has a nice, simple, easy-to-use user interface on top of all the power of Unix? I suppose it's kind of like that but on a phone.